Lord of the Rings SVCD to DVD

[SkoalWintergreen]

Okay I know DVD dosent' support the SVCD resolutions and all but I wanted to know if it is possible to convert it over to DVD with reencoding and everything, can I combine the 4 discs into one Mpeg and then split the huge MPEG into movie and sound, then re-encode the video using CCE, witch I have no idea what the settings would need to be, then would i be able to use the mp2? or do I need to re-encode the sound? then obviously I assume I could put it back together with something like DVD-IT or what not. Anyone know how to do it?

[Nahie]

Check out this thread:

http://forum.doom9.org/showthread.php?threadid=12676

and this page:

http://www.offeryn.de/dv.htm

There is a util on that page called "AVestensione" that can patch 480x480 mpeg2 files to make DVD Maestro (and maybe other authoring programs?) see the MPEG as 352x480, which is a valid DVD resolution. So maybe it is possible to author and create a DVD with SVCD resolution, even if it isn't technically supported. Now the only question is: can players play such a DVD and what would it look like? Stretched? Squished? Hmm... looks like some testing is in order...

UPDATE: Okay, I tried this. I got a PAL SVCD file and patched it with the AVestensione tool listed above. I had to re-encode the audio to 48 khz, but didn't re-encode the video, which had a resolution of 480x576 (PAL). I then imported the video and audio into DVD Maestro and made a short DVD, re-patched the .vob file Maestro output, then burned to a DVD-RW. Here are the results:

Software DVD players (WinDVD 2.1 and DirectDVD 2.5) Play the patched DVD perfectly! It is stretched to the full window!

Hardware decoders (Hollywood Plus and Netstream 2000) Play the patched DVD perfectly!

Standalone player (Pioneer 343) Recognizes the disc as DVD and plays it, but keeps the vertical resolution at 480, so it only fills 2/3 of the screen :( Maybe the ifoedit guy can make a patch to have it fill the screen???

So the good news is...it can be done, but only if you play the DVD in software players or with hardware decoders, not standalones.

-Nahie

[MustaZERO]

Im transcoding LOTR svcd dvd rip as we speak. I'm just transcoding the video in cce (using avisynth to merge the 4 seperate parts), converting the audio to ac3 in soft encode and making some menus in after effects. There are several ways you can go about converting it, but I prefer to transcode then try and fool a program to accept non compliant video that may not play right in my standalone.

[Methanoid]

Originally posted by Nahie
UPDATE: Okay, I tried this. I got a PAL SVCD file and patched it with the AVestensione tool listed above. I had to re-encode the audio to 48 khz, but didn't re-encode the video, which had a resolution of 480x576 (PAL). I then imported the video and audio into DVD Maestro and made a short DVD, re-patched the .vob file Maestro output, then burned to a DVD-RW. Here are the results:

Software DVD players (WinDVD 2.1 and DirectDVD 2.5) Play the patched DVD perfectly! It is stretched to the full window!

Hardware decoders (Hollywood Plus and Netstream 2000) Play the patched DVD perfectly!

Standalone player (Pioneer 343) Recognizes the disc as DVD and plays it, but keeps the vertical resolution at 480, so it only fills 2/3 of the screen :( Maybe the ifoedit guy can make a patch to have it fill the screen???
-Nahie [/B]

Nahie, try this program as well and report back if it works...

http://www.geocities.com/eby_vdo/

I'm expecting my DVR-A03 real soon and would love to be able to ditch that pile of SVCDs. This program allows all sorts of tweaks to the MPEG stream headers, you could mark it as 352*576 or 720*576 and see if either works?

Meth

[Arky]

fascinating!!

I never knew you could fool Maestro in this manner. Great information -

"I learned something today!"


Arky ;o)

[Nahie]

Progress is being made. I have now been able to get the SVCD resolution MPEG file to play full screen on my Pioneer 343 by having the player switch over to VCD/SVCD decoding after starting in DVD mode...the only problem now is the audio skips...which I think is because I converted it to 48 khz, and the SVCD decoder wants 44.1. I will keep you all updated.

UPDATE: It works. I have successfully made a DVD from a SVCD MPEG file (without re-encoding the video file) that plays at perfect resolution on my Pioneer DVD 343 player. I got this working as mentioned above, but it seems that my player doesn't like MPEG audio for this, but when I converted the MPEG Layer 2 44.1 khz SVCD soundtrack to 48 khz AC-3 or .WAV (PCM) it played fine.

What does this mean? No, you don't have to re-encode your SVCD video MPEG files to get them to play on your DVD player, even if they are 480x480. I have only tested this with my equipment but it seems to be working fine. I will do a complete test with a long movie later this week, after it finishes downloading ;) There are probably a lot of players that it won't work on but then there are probably many that it will.

@Methanoid

I couldn't get that utility to work...it would crash on all the files I tried it on.

[Methanoid]

Nahie

What did U do differently then this time to fix the aspect ratio business?

[SkoalWintergreen]

Woah? what did you do to get it to switch over how exactly did you go about getting this to play? write us a little more details on the process? thanks.

[Nahie]

Well, it isn't too easy right now but I'm looking for some tools that will make it much easier. Until I find them, this is the process...

Here are the tools you need right now:

1 - AVestensione (download it from www.offeryn.com) ****this tool only works for PAL files right now, NTCS has a bug and it won't work, but I have emailed the author and hopefully he will fix it****
2 - MPEG Repair 1.58 or higher from Pixel Tools
3 - Spruce DVD Maestro 2.x
4 - Misc tools to demux MPEG streams and encode AC-3, and convert audio to 48 khz (you can use many tools for these tasks, I use Womble MPEG VCR to demux mpeg streams, Winamp to convert .mpa to .wav, Scenarist AC-3 encoder to encode AC-3, and Adobe Premier to convert audio from 44.1 khz to 48)
5 - DVD burner and burning software of course :)

1) Demux your SVCD MPEG2 file into audio and video.
2) Convert the audio into 48 khz .wav or .ac-3
3) Use AVestensione to patch the mpeg video header (you may need to rename it to *.mpg instead of *.mpv) If you have NTSC files that aren't too big, you can use a hex editor to edit the first header to show 352 x 480 instead of 480 x 480. I'm still looking for a better solution for NTSC files...
4) Here is the tricky part...you must use MPEG Repair to patch the MPEG file to include Pan and Scan information. The MPEG spec allows you to specify a pan and scan portion of the mpeg file. You must tell it to use 480 x 480 as the pan and scan profile, so that the DVD player will show this area in full screen on your TV.
5) Import the files into DVD Maestro and author as a regular DVD, setting the aspect ratio of the movie to "16*9 LB/PS."
6) Burn to DVD-R(W).
7) Put the disc in your standalone. You now have to set your player
to display Pan and Scan. I don't know how to do this on all players but my Pioneer 343 has this setting in the setup menu, and I suppose other players are similar.

That is all. I have even done still frame captures and the video aspect ratio on this hacked DVD matches the SVCD one. So there you have it.

Things to do:

1) See if mpeg audio files can be patched to make maestro see it as 48khz. My guess is that this can be done, and the players can play it. But I haven't been able to figure this out yet.
2) Better (freeware) tools. Most people don't have Pixeltools MPEG repair, and this is a relatively expensive, buggy and hard to use tool. Using a hex editor I can see that all it does is add pan and scan output to MPEG files. This is easy to add, but I'm not a programmer (yet). Also need a tool for NTSC file header patches.

That is all for now
-Nahie

[mikeathome]

@Arky and others:

It's sufficient to patch the stream on time before importing into (e.g. Maestro), than import and after that (close Maestro or just the project) and immmediately re-patch the stream back to original. Maestro (and others) moan about wrong resolution only at import, they later on work with the original resolution video normally. Only one drawback with Maestro, there's NO thumbnail preview available, which is a bit hard to navigate but normal preview will work as expected (even aspect ration is ok).
Patch only the first header. Be aware when you mix different resolutions it's basically impossible to repatch the resoulation in the VOB later on. That's why we've 'invented' the immediate re-patch.

There you go, an exellent resolution patcher, PAL only, maybe we mail the author to implement NTSC and Pan Scan info, shouldn't be that difficult.

http://kickme.to/DVDPatcher

mike

[robinsj]

Mikeathome: I am just a newbie... and i don't really understand what you mean when you say patch on time... and then repatch immediataly... could you please explain the steps you are talking about??

[Nahie]

Thanks Mikeathome. I had heard about that program but couldn't find a copy anywhere. And good news...version 102a works for NTSC files! It has a custom resolution where you can enter any resolution, so you can enter 352 x 480. Remember to only patch the first header. I imported this file into Maestro and it works fine.

-Nahie

[robinsj]

I have just tried this dvd patcher that is supposed to work with NTSC... It didn't, It smushes the video up into the top... about 1 inch wide... and then a whole bunch of green.... am i doing something wrong?

[Nahie]

Well it worked fine for me. Make sure you:

1: patch it to NTSC 352x480 or 720x480 using the "custom" size setting(obviously)
2: Keep the bitrate field the same (copy the value in the right box to the custom bitrate tab).

What decoder did you try? I played my patched files with the elecard player (www.elecard.com) and it played perfectly. Like mikeathome said, it won't display properly in Maestro's thumbnail window, but it will when you use the software/hardware previewer.

[robinsj]

Okay I did that... and using that decoder from elecard it worked.. but now when i try and import it to maestro... it give me the media not supported error... how are you putting the video into maestro

[robinsj]

Also does the audio still need to be re-encoded??

[Nahie]

Same way you import anything into maestro. Yes, the audio still has to be re-encoded. You could make a DVD-RW with just the video to test if your player can even do this first, before bothering to go further. It sounds like your MPEG file has been screwed up somewhere. You did patch just the first header, didn't you?

[robinsj]

I did patch the first header.... with that elecard decoder... did you notice it puts that little white box up in the upper right hand corner.. and the video kinda plays shaky? will it does this on the standalone to?

[Nahie]

The little white box is a watermark...because the elecard player is shareware. No, it will not do this on the standalone. The video was not shaky for me but it had block errors during playback. Again, this will not happen on the standalone player (if your player can decode SVCD at that bitrate in the first place).

[robinsj]

Okay, I think I am getting there... but I am having trouble keeping the audio and video in sync with each other.... i am demuxing with mpeg2vcr .... converting the mpa to wav with sound forge, encodeing the wav to ac3 with softencode... and remuxing with bbmpeg... but the audio is slower then the vidoe??? with my final output

[Nahie]

Originally posted by robinsj
Okay, I think I am getting there... but I am having trouble keeping the audio and video in sync with each other...the audio is slower then the vidoe??? with my final output

Make sure your soundcard supports 48 khz. Some older soundcards don't, and some newer ones don't do it right. Also, there is a reason I use adobe premier to convert the audio...it is the only reliable way I have found to upsample and downsample 48khz. I think soundforge will speed up and slow down the audio to get to the desired sample rate.

And now, some more observations. I burned a much longer SDVD (is this what we should call it?) today, with a PAL copy of a longer video. This video was encoded at 480x576 48 khz audio. I can't seem to find audio specs for SVCD so I guess you can use either 44.1 or 48. Most SVCD's seem to be 44.1. Anyway, this video sample was much easier to put on a DVD-R. I didn't have to decode the audio or resample it or anything. And the big surprise is that I didn't have to add Pan and Scan info to it either. This was really strange, as the video didn't have any pan and scan info in it (I checked it with a hex editor). Odd. But it wouldn't import into DVD maestro (crashed half-way through, something about a sequence header being out of order) so I made the DVD with DVD wise. I don't know why NTSC material is being so difficult, but I'm going to try making a NTSC disc with DVD wise and seeing how it works.

[bedhead]

hey guys, this sounds very interesting. if you are done with all your testing, could you post a guide on how to do this step by step? thanx.

[SkoalWintergreen]

hey would it be possible just to load the video file into ReMpeg and then transcode into DVD format? match source? shouldn't that work?

[Streetcleaner]

Is there a possibility to add another language track? What Programs would you use?

Greetz
Streetcleaner

[Nahie]

Originally posted by SkoalWintergreen
hey would it be possible just to load the video file into ReMpeg and then transcode into DVD format? match source? shouldn't that work?

The whole point of this is to avoid re-encoding the video (and in some cases, the audio).

Well I downloaded a very large movie (hint: see topic of this thread) this weekend and tried it out today. And I got it to work on my standalone player, without re-encoding the video at all. I had to resample the audio to 48khz and recompress it, but it still sounded great. Maybe I'll write a guide on this today, but basically all you have to do is follow the instructions I wrote before. NTSC material is more difficult than PAL, but it can be done, and it works in a Pioneer 343.

-Nahie

[Streetcleaner]

my Problem is that i wanted to try to dub it german from a vcd but the point is that the movie is shorter than the svcd release because one or two scenes were cut out.
Are there any Programs out there to pull audio tracks into MPG2 Files like i want?

Greetz
Streetcleaner

[FirstBorg]

Hi. Im new to this board and have a question.
I have also a movie splitted in 4 svcd files, and want to merge them to one file. I tried it with Tmpg, the program has frozen. I treid it in dos with copy. That worked fine, but the generated file has only the time index of the first svcd file. It is 3 gigs big, but has only the time from the first file in it, if I play it with powerdvd. I want to burn it to a dvd too, and make chapters for it, as scvd. But i need the file with the correct time code. Can you help me?
thx in advance

[FirstBorg]

I just read that this copy command, destroys the header. Is there a program to repair the header?

[robinsj]

Same problem here.. to combine all 4 files... maybe you can help nahie... I am doing this with the NTSC version.... and I got it to work great... here is what i did....

1. Demux with MPEG2VCR...
2. Convert mpa to wav with sound forge.
3. convert wav (44.1khz to 48khz) with premier.
4. softencode wav to ac3 (come to find out this step isn't nec.
5. dvdpatcher the mpv files to 720x480
6. open up the new mpv file in dvd maestro
7. save the project, and exit maestro
8. dvdpatcher the mpv files back to 480x480
9. I have no idea how to use dvd maestro, so I wante to try something, I opened up spruce up.. and then opened the mpv files, and they opened (wierd huh), if I tried before using dvdpatcher the first time.. they wouldn't open in spruce up... dvdpatch them and then try opening them in spruce up... still no go... oddly.. only way i could get them to open was by patching.. open in maestro.. save project...repatching... then open them in spruce up... worked like a charm.. hehe... audio and video in sync and all... but then, i started thinking... why don't i figure out how to combine all these files.. so i just have one file... well.. I used tmpgenc to merge the files... and it would never finish.. it would just get to 99% and hang.. although it merged it all, i would just hit abort... the file was still there i played it... seemed to play okay... then take that one file.. and go through the patching and such to get it to open in spruce up... it would open... but it would only register as the length of the very first file... what is going on?? Since this.. i have tried about 5 or 6 different mergeing utilites... all other programs i try finish without hanging... but still the same final result... any ideas....

My idea now is.... i am going to get all the 4 files into spruce up... create a img... rip the img to the harddrive.. so it has all the VOB's in it... and merge the vobs and see if that works... who knows... this sure is fun though isn't it!!!

[FirstBorg]

Thats the same problem I have. I read that if this problam appears the header of the new, big mpg file is damaged. So, we would just need a utility to repair that header.

[robinsj]

But, what ruined the header in the first place?? they should all have headers considering they work seperatly... so where are the headers getting ruined??

[fiv5]

Hi,

I'm also trying to convert SVCD to DVD, but I am quite prepared to transcode/re-encode the video. But I have little experience with avisynth, my current plan is demux the mpg (NTSC, 480x480 SVCD), run the mpg throught avisynth (mpeg2dec.dll, and use a resize filter to resize the video to 720x480) then encode back to DVD MPEG2 with CCE (v2.50 opening the .avs file).

Just basically wondering if anyone can telll me if this should work, currently when i load the avs files into CCE it says:

'Frame Size 952 x 56 is not supported, supported frame size is up to 720x576'

Obviosly im doing something wrong :) , any help greatly appreciated :)

Ta

fiv5

[FirstBorg]

Originally posted by robinsj
But, what ruined the header in the first place?? they should all have headers considering they work seperatly... so where are the headers getting ruined??

Lets say a mpeg file looks like this : [header/frames]. after merging 4 files with the copy command, or several tools based on this command, the new file should look like this: [Header1/Frames1/Header2/Frames2.....] But every header after Header1 will be interpreted by windows as frames, so you have this [Header1/frames]. And this header1 has only the time of the first mpg file saved.

We need a programm that analyzes the hole mpg stream and rewrite the header.

[robinsj]

Well... right now I am almost ready to make an image... in my previous post, I said that it wasn't neccessary to encode the wavs to AC3, I was wrong... you have to... because if you just leave them as wavs, they are to big and they won't fit on the dvdr.. so you need to encode them so that everything will fit on the dvdr... I am almost done doing that... once that is done, and the dvd program creates me some VOB's, I am hoping that I can merge those... Which would be nice, because then no re-encoding took place anywhere, and the quality never changed... Should be done in about an hour... I'll post the results...

[FirstBorg]

If your finished and it works, could you post a step by step tutorial on how you did it, and maybe links to the software.

[Nahie]

As far as merging the SVCD MPEG files, I used DVD Maestro to do this. I couldn't get it to work any other way...tried all the usual tools to no avail (TMPEG, Mediaware Solutions M2 Edit, Vitec MPEG Pro, even DV-Tool - none worked correctly). I suppose I should have mentioned this before but I didn't know if it was just a specific problem I was having or if everyone would have this problem. DVD Maestro has a way to combine MPEG files and make a sync soundtrack for them. I'm not sure if all versions support this but I know 2.914c does. Just put all your patched movies in a single movie stream and right-click, select "export MPEG file" and it will merge the files into one. But before you do that, you should make an audio track. Put all your clips in the movie timeline and right-click in an audio track, select "create sync audio track" and it will open another window where you can specify which audio track goes to which movie. It will then join them and output a file (only works with .wav and .ac3 though, and it will convert your .wav files to .aif, which you will have to convert to .wav unless your .ac3 encoder supports .aif). I am working on a guide but it is taking a long time because I'm more familiar with DVD Authoring tools than desktop publishing tools.

-Nahie

[FirstBorg]

where can I get DVD Maestro?

[shobe]

Hey Nahie, so you are able to do a SVCD2DVD successfully with PAL or NTSC? Please write a guide for NTSC, thanks.

[shobe]

Found this guide from VCDhelp.com

http://www.vcdhelp.com/vcddvdr.htm

Nahie, is this guide similar to your method? If not, what are the differneces?

shobe

[Nahie]

That guide doesn't use DVD Maestro or Pixeltools MPEG repair, so it won't work for NTSC (with my experiments at least) but it should work fine for PAL. It also appears that he has altered the screen shot for DVDpatcher, because the 1.02a version doesn't allow you to patch just the first header (the radio button is broken).

[robinsj]

I didn't try the DVD Maestro way of combining the mpegs... I will try it... You tried the same programs I tried to get them to merge... and it didn't work... I will post a guide on how I did it, as soon as i get all the bugs worked out of doing it...

[robinsj]

I am just finishing up with a NTSC version... svcd2dvd, and I will post how i did it.. step by step after I am all done...

[SkoalWintergreen]

Are you guys having problems combining the orginal MPEG files? I'm extracting the mpeg from the bin and then i'm going to combine all those MPEG files before I do any demuxing or anything like that

[robinsj]

Yes... you can't just combine them... because of the timecode problems... we have figured out that you can combine them with DVD Maestro (thanks nahie, tried it, worked great) ....

[FirstBorg]

could you please tell me where I can get DVD Maestro, and maybe send me mpeg repair please?

[shobe]

Great guys, sounds like this SVCD2DVD is possible after all. Great job!!

shobe

[robinsj]

Almost done.. then I will post a guide.... working with these 3gb files is a real resource HOG.... and here are my system specs...

Athlon MP 1800
512mb DDR PC2100
4 80GB 7200 ATA133 Drives
ATI Radeon 8500

Man... pulling in those movies files into dvd maestro.. hogs everything up...

[shobe]

Thanks Robinsj for keeping us updated.

shobe

[Nahie]

Okay, my guide is done (pdf with screenshots). Now I just need a place to upload it...

UPDATE: how about here...

http://www.nahie.net/Convert_SVCD_DVD.PDF

Let me know what you guys think of the guide.

[robinsj]

Nahie.... I think I spoke to soon, I did what you said with combining the mpegs in DVD maestro... but when I went back to import that new mpeg into dvd maestro... it gets all the way to 78% and says this ...

"Temporal References In GOP #13593 (zero-based) are out of sequence..."

Then I Hit okay... and it says this

Temporal References in a GOP are out of Sequence..."

Then Hit okay again... and it goes back to the main dvd maestro screen....

Only Thing I can think of is something was screwed up at the beginning of the 4th video because of it stopping at 78%...??